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ADDRESS 



OF 



PRESIDENT WILSON 

AT THE 

UNVEILING OF THE STATUE 
TO THE MEMORY 



OF 



COMMODORE JOHN BARRY 



AT WASHINGTON, D. C. 
SATURDAY, MAY 16, 1914 




WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 

1914 



D, OF n: 

MAY 23 t3l4 



ADDRESS. 



Mr, Secretary, Ladies, and Gentlemen: I esteem it a privilege 
to be present on this interesting occasion, and I am very much tempted 
to anticipate some part of what the orators of the day will say about 
the character of the great man whose memory we celebrate. If I 
were to attempt an historical address, I might, however, be led too 
far afield. I am going to take the liberty, therefore, of drawing a few 
inferences from the significance of this occasion. 

I think that we can never be present at a ceremony of this kind, 
which carries our thought back to the great Revolution, by means of 
which our Government was set up, without feeling that it is an 
occasion of reminder, of renewal, of refreshment, when we turn our 
thoughts again to the great issues which were presented to the little 
Nation which then asserted its independence to the world; to which 
it spoke both in eloquent representations of its cause and in the 
sound of arms, and ask om'selves what it was that these men fought 
for. No one can turn to the career of Commodore Barry without 
feeling a touch of the enthusiasm with which he devoted an origi- 
nating mind to the great cause which he intended to serve, and it 
behooves us, Hving in this age when no man can question the power 
of the Nation, when no man would dare to doubt its right and its 
determination to act for itself, to ask what it was that filled the 
hearts of these men when they set the Nation up. 

For patriotism, ladies and gentlemen, is in my mind not merely a 
sentiment. There is a certain effervescence, I suppose, which ought 
to be permitted to those who allow their hearts to speak in the cele- 
bration of the glory and majesty of their country, but the country 
can have no glory and no majesty imless there be a deep principle 
and conviction back of the enthusiasm. Patriotism is a principle, 
not a mere sentiment. No man can be a true patriot who does not 
feel himself shot through and through with a deep ardor for what 
his country stands for, what its existence means, what its purpose is 
declared to be in its history and in its policy. I recall those solemn 
lines of the poet Tennyson in which he tries to give voice to his con- 
ception of what it is that stirs within a nation: "Some sense of duty, 
something of a faith, some reverence for the laws ourselves have 
made, some patient force to change them when we will, some civic 
manhood firm against the crowd;" steadfastness, clearness of purpose, 

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courage, persistency, and that uprightness which comes from the 
clear thinking of men who wish to serve not themselves but their 
fellow men. 

What does the United States stand for, then, that our hearts 
should be stirred by the memory of the men who set her Constitution 
up? John Barry fought, like every other man in the Revolution, in 
order that America might be free to make her own life without 
interruption or disturbance from any other quarter. You can sum 
the whole thing up in that, that America had a right to her own 
self-determined life; and what are our corollaries from that? You 
do not have to go back to stir your thoughts again with the issues of 
the Revolution. Some of the issues of the Revolution were not the 
cause of it, but merely the occasion for it. There are just as vital 
things stirring now that concern the existence of the Nation as were 
stirring then, and every man who worthily stands in this presence 
should examine himself and see whether he has the full conception of 
what it means that America should live her own Hfe. Washington 
saw it when he wrote his farewell address. It was not merely because 
of passing and transient circumstances that Washington said that 
we must keep free from entangUng alliances. It was because he saw 
that no country had yet set its face in the same direction in which 
America had set her face. We can not form alliances with those 
who are not going our way; and in our might and majesty and in the 
confidence and definiteness of our own purpose we need not and we 
should not form alhances with any nation in the world. Those who 
are right, those who study their consciences in determining their 
poUcies, those who hold their honor higher than their advantage, do 
not need alliances. You need alliances when you are not strong, 
and you are weak only when you are not true to yourself. You are 
weak only when you are in the wrong; you are weak only when you 
are afraid to do the right; you are weak only when you doubt your 
cause and the majesty of a nation's might asserted. 

There is another coroUary. i John Barry was an Irishman, but his 
heart crossed the Atlantic with him. He did not leave it in Ireland. 
And the test of all of us — for all of us had our origins on the other side 
of the sea — is whether we will assist in enabling America to live her 
separate and independent life, retaining our ancient affections, indeed, 
but determining everything that we do by the interests that exist on 
this side of the sea. Some Americans need hyphens in their names, 
because only part of them has come over; but when the whole man 
has come over, heart and thought and aU, the hyphen drops of its 
own weight out of his name. This man was not an Irish-American ; he 
was an Irishman who became an American. I venture to say if he 
voted he voted with regard to the questions as they looked on this side 
of the water and not as they affected the other side ; and that is my 



infallible test of a genuine American, that when he votes or when 
he acts or when he fights his heart and his thought are centered 
nowhere but in the emotions and the purposes and the policies of the 
United States. 

This man illustrates for me all the splendid strength which we^ 
brought into this country by the magnet of freedom. Men have been 
drawn to this country by the same thing that has made us love this 
country — by the opportunity to live their own lives and to think their 
own thoughts and to let their whole natures expand with the expan- 
sion of a free and mighty Nation. We have brought out of the stocks 
of all the world all the best impulses and have appropriated them and 
Americanized them and translated them into the glory and majesty 
of a great country. 

So, ladies and gentlemen, when we go out from this presence we 
ought to take this idea with us that we, too, are devoted to the 
purpose of enabling America to live her own life, to be the justest, 
the most progressive, the most honorable, the most enlightened 
Nation in the world. Any man that touches our honor is our enemy. 
Any man who stands in the way of the kind of progress which makes ' 
for human freedom can not call himself our friend. Any m.an who 
does not feel behind him the whole push and rush and compulsion 
that filled men's hearts in the time of the Revolution is no American. 
No man who thinks first of himself and afterwards of his country 
can call himseK an American. America must be enriched by us. 
We must not live upon her; she must live by means of us. 

I, for one, come to this shrine to renew the impulses of American 
democracy. I would be ashamed of myself if I went away from this 
place without realizing again that every bit of selfishness must be 
purged from our policy, that every bit of self-seeking must be purged 
from our individual consciences, and that we must be great, if we 
would be great at all, in the light and illumination of the example of 
men who gave everything that they were and everything that they / 
had to the glory and honor of America. -^ 

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